The Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (BMB) Core will provide technical and personnel support to facilitate, standardize and implement the analysis of tissue samples and will support investigators of the SCOR in using new biochemical assays, immunochemical and molecular biology techniques. This Core facility will serve through its units all investigators who will require assistance (1) with antibody work including all types of immunochemical methods, and the production of new monoclonal or polyclonal antibodies, (2) in localizing various genes (mRNAs) in tissue sections or cell cultures, and (3) all types of molecular biology methods. The BMB Core intends to aid each SCOR project by providing technical, instrumental and personnel support (i) which are commonly used by several projects or (ii) occasionally used by investigators but require special technical or safety regulations or (iii) require special equipment or technical expertise. Furthermore, this core will introduce, establish and provide new methods to investigators, if the individual SCOR projects do not have technical or personnel support or special expertise needed to establish a new, but time-consuming, method. The BMB Core facility, based on the experience of the current SCOR grant and the expected demands of this application, consists of three major units. They Hybridoma/Immunochemistry Core Unit will accommodate all investigators who are concerned with the development of specific monoclonal or polyclonal antibodies and/or are facilitating methods to identify, detect, or quantify proteins using antibodies. Thus, this core will serve all investigators who want to detect or quantify cartilage matrix molecules or their "metabolites" in sera, urine, tissue culture media or tissue extracts. The in situ Hybridization Core Unit will support all studies requiring the localization of various mRNAs either in tissue sections or cell cultures. Thus, this core facility will help investigators in the processing of cells or tissues for specialized analysis of genes in normal or pathological samples. The Molecular Biology Core Unit will provide expertise in the entire scale of molecular biology repertoire. This core unit will help and provide expertise in a more specialized area of molecular medicine and genetics. Since many of these techniques require frequent combination of different methods and protocols, we intend to centralize these core units into one Core facility directed and coordinated by one person, to guarantee the most effective and efficient integration of research approaches and assessment of quality control.